I have just got this game and am looking forward to playing it. One small question why has the Bsmark got such a high armour class. this is not replecated by real world expewriance the armout scheame of the bismark was quite bad as the hull of the ship was very well armoured along with most german ships wich is why the often did not sink even when punded into scrap. But the Superstructe was not well armourd which is why in the final action bismark could only fire from 0849 to 0931 by wich point her superstructi=ure was a mass of scrap. I relise that this sort of tech detal dose not fit into the type of game VaS is but I think that the Bismark class should have it armour drop to 5+ as it was not some invunrable supership. it was a fast well armed battleship with the armour layout from WW1 without the lessons learned from Jutland applyed.
Bismark Armour
- Thread starter moglwi
- Start date
the 6+ is a general figure for its overall size, weight and armour
the actual damage figure 43/13 represents the fact that she isnt much better than the KGV even though she is some 80ft longer and 5000t heavier
I am probably totally wrong about this
Just think what the KGV would have been like if not for the treaty!
the actual damage figure 43/13 represents the fact that she isnt much better than the KGV even though she is some 80ft longer and 5000t heavier
I am probably totally wrong about this
Just think what the KGV would have been like if not for the treaty!
The armour values of VAS are set using the maximum thickness of armour on the ship. Bismarsk gets a 6 by virtue (IIRC, I'm away from my referneces at the moment) of her conning tower. If you use belt armour (which I would argue is a better measure of overall protection) she drops to a 5.
Of course, this wouldn't conform to the "myth of invincibility" which surrounds what was, in reality, a pretty mediocre design that got lucky against a ship from an earlier generation
Of course, this wouldn't conform to the "myth of invincibility" which surrounds what was, in reality, a pretty mediocre design that got lucky against a ship from an earlier generation
DM, how does the game rate the ten newest battleships that the USN had either built or had nearing completion (N.Carolina, S.Dakota & Iowa) as compared to the Bismarck?
In a generally less serious comment than above moglwi, the Bismarck got that rating because Johnny Horton said so :lol: :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTRbPhF5P80
In a generally less serious comment than above moglwi, the Bismarck got that rating because Johnny Horton said so :lol: :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTRbPhF5P80
chaos0xomega
Mongoose
moglwi, you assume too much when you say it was the Bismarcks/German ship armour that kept the ships from sinking. Doing a bit of a research a couple of months ago, I discovered that it is entirely possible to riddle a ships hull full of holes, and pretty much flood most of the interior, but the ship won't necessarily sink. It has something to do with weight, shape of the hull, buoyancy, and how many tons the hull can handle/displace and how many tons the ship actually displaces and stuff like that.
Just throwing it out there.
Just throwing it out there.
Thats right as long as the bit that you riddle with holes is above the waterline, and those holes don't "bob" as the ship rolls and waves pass it by. However, flooding most of the interior will most defintely result in sinking, unless the ship is made of naturally buoyant material. In fact, you can flood ludicrously small parts of the ship and cause capsize throughloss of stability whilst the ship apparently has buckets of reserve of buoyancy left. Firefighting is a good way to generate this (many ships have been lost because Dc crews sprayed water around all over the place without realising the effects their actiosn wer having on the stability of the ship). Asymmetric floooding is another way, where flooding damage is concentrated on one side of the ship, as is "trapped buoyancy", where flooding is contained above buoyant compartments lower in the ship.
chaos0xomega
Mongoose
DM, I suggest you look up r/c warship combat. There are some (very little though) interesting stories of ships that were literally filled with water, and riding very low in the water, but did not sink/were not sinking due to buoyancy/hull shape/ something I can't remember. The ship was not designed in this way, it just worked out like that in one of the battles.
Oh, and you lose speaking priveliges to me until the Surcouf is published :twisted:
Oh, and you lose speaking priveliges to me until the Surcouf is published :twisted:
Greg Smith
Mongoose
chaos0xomega said:
But they are largely balsa. http://www.ausbg.org/index.html I don't think the Bismark was.
I can remember reading of a merchantman that was saved from sinking after being torpedoed by virtue of the fact it's hold was full of a cargo of cork...
And of a german U boat crew who were so bored on patrol they landed a boat party and went to the cinema in Nova Scotia!
Have to find the reference.....
And of a german U boat crew who were so bored on patrol they landed a boat party and went to the cinema in Nova Scotia!
Have to find the reference.....
I don't see much in the way of steel on an r/c warship
This is actually an area in which I work on a day to day basis. eapon effects on ships and other platforms, including hydrodynamic effects of damage, damage control and simulation, is all part of my "day job"
This is one of the events I had a hand in
http://www.usswainwright.org/photoalbum/SinkEx/index.html
chaos0xomega said:
chaos0xomega, Greg Smith has got you on this one :wink:. DM is the best one of us to answer this, but I can at least attest to probably being the only one of us that has been in actual full-out R/C combat (does that make me a veteran?) :lol:. A real ship floats by displacing the water that would otherwise occupy the space where the ship is, but wood and balsa models get an added advantage of the natural buoyancy of their construction and some additional "cheats" like sealed areas of the interior that house electrical components. The rules of the "sport/hobby" do restrict overuse of this as a way to stay afloat mostly though. I was in a group centered in the Gig Harbor area (Washington State, USA) back in 1984 and was active for about a year. It was a hairy sport where you put at risk something you made by hand with full R/C gear built into it. I had about a hundred and fifty hours of labor into a 1/144 scale US heavy cruiser of the New Orleans class. I named her the USS Astoria after one of three of the class that was sunk in a night action 8-9 Aug. 1942 at Guadalcanal. It just happened that I had lived only an hour from the town it was named for. 49" long, or about 1.25 meters I guess, it never sank but it did take on water from wave action getting into above-waterline holes from 1/4" ball bearings from a six foot long model of the HMS Hood no less. The club was a bit heavy towards allied ships so to even some battles out we had some players switch sides. Yes, there were models of Iowa and even Yamato in the club, and they were impressive. I don't really remember any cases of ships filled with water that did not sink to the bottom of our little pond, as we were fairly picky about letting any "illegal" Styrofoam inserts or large air pockets be placed. Our ships were made to be allowed to sink, and they did indeed when they filled with water. Full compartmentalisation was not practised as in a real ship though so this should have more than offset any natural bouyancy advantage in construction materials.
A good example of how much flooding and damage a ship can potentially take is the case of the Seydlitz (German Battlecruiser) after Jutland. Her she was hit by
1 torpedo
8-15 inch shells
6-13.5 inch shells
8-12 inch shells
Flooding at its worst was 5329 tons causing an 8 degree list to port. If you do a google image search on Seydlitz there are several pictures of her after Jutland (the best when I did it is 3rd row down and 2nd from the right and shows thge huge list well). She looks absolutely battered.
Looking at the figures the actual armour thicknesses are generally slightly inferior to the contempory KGV. Internal protection is good however with extensive external subdivision into watertight compartments.
oggie
1 torpedo
8-15 inch shells
6-13.5 inch shells
8-12 inch shells
Flooding at its worst was 5329 tons causing an 8 degree list to port. If you do a google image search on Seydlitz there are several pictures of her after Jutland (the best when I did it is 3rd row down and 2nd from the right and shows thge huge list well). She looks absolutely battered.
Looking at the figures the actual armour thicknesses are generally slightly inferior to the contempory KGV. Internal protection is good however with extensive external subdivision into watertight compartments.
oggie
Don't forget though that the extensive subdivision was compromised by an equally extensive system of pipework ostensibly designed to remove flood water but, in actuality, horribly vulnerable to shock damage and thus extremely leaky (understanding of underwater and air blast induced shock, and design against it, was extremely thin)
Over 5000 tonnes of water sounds a lot, but bear i mind that these ships start with a "reserve of buoyancy (a measure of the excess buoyancy in the intact ship) of somewhat more than 200% and it suddenly becomes apparent just how little is required to cause seriosu damage. Also, gunfire damage doesn't always (in fact frequently doesn't) result in flooding damage.
Over 5000 tonnes of water sounds a lot, but bear i mind that these ships start with a "reserve of buoyancy (a measure of the excess buoyancy in the intact ship) of somewhat more than 200% and it suddenly becomes apparent just how little is required to cause seriosu damage. Also, gunfire damage doesn't always (in fact frequently doesn't) result in flooding damage.
When working out the armor rating I used a combination armor thickness from main turret face, main turret barbarette, belt armor over engineering, belt armor over magazines, deck armor over engineering, deck armor over magazines and control tower armor.
Where the Bismarck tends to shine is the fact that she had a descent belt armor backed by a large void followed by splinter armor, in addition to the void and the quite thick torpedo bulge bulkhead. (You can see some the when you consider that her beam was 118 feet vs say the KGV which was 103. Most of that difference was the size of the voids. This tends to improve here overhall armor rating. In fact, the Bismarck's armor scheme was similar to the Iowa Class (though not as indepth), whose base belt armor was only 12.6 inches but was still considered one of the best protected battleships ever.
The real problem when it came to developing armor was the very narrow band resulting from a single d6 die roll for penetrating armor and requirement to keep armor simple (i.e. no belt armor, deck armor, upperworks armor categories).
An armor rating of 1 means that every hit will penetrate armor. The desicion was made that we did want units such as destroyers and such (obviously the lightest armored warships) automatically penetrate by every hit, so they were given a two. Battleships still auto-penetrate by vitue of their AP and SAP ratings on their main armament.
So that means the armor band is actually 2 through 6 for warships. Why 6? And not higher? Well, once again, we wanted to make sure that many weapons (8-inch guns, torpedoes) have the ability to penetrate thick armor without always relying on the 6 always penetrate rule. We didn't want to armor 7's or 8's or so forth. So armor was capped at 6 for the thickest armor allowing less thick armor to fall into the 4's an 5's, rather than, say 7's for the thick stuff and 5's and 6's for the intermediate.
So we have a narrow range of armor ratings (2 to 6). So now we need to come up with a system tha assigns armor values. This range system needs to give some advantage to heavy cruisers that had real armor versus destroyers who essentially have none. If the destroyers are a 2 then cruisers (with their 3-5 inches of armor) needed to be 3's desipte the fact that their armor can be 4 times less thick than battleship armor which max out at a 6. So now the really heavily armored stuff falls into a range band of 4 to 6. That grouping is very tight. The result is some units get better armor than is initally obvious (i.e the Bismarck). Some balance occurs with the long range plunging fire rule where the Bismark come up short, because she doesn't have particularly good deck armor.
Some might say.....How about a ship special trait? Like say "Tough: Subtract 1 from the attacking DD rolls." It was considered and dropped for the initial release to maintain the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle. The idea of improved traits and stuff may appear in later products, but its pretty clear in the forums that alot of people don't want lots of extra rules, so who knows.
Anyway.....I hope this long winded answer provides people an idea of some of the thought process we went through when assigning values to units. It also is an example of how simplifying game rules can reduce (to a degree) historical accuracy.
--- Rich
Where the Bismarck tends to shine is the fact that she had a descent belt armor backed by a large void followed by splinter armor, in addition to the void and the quite thick torpedo bulge bulkhead. (You can see some the when you consider that her beam was 118 feet vs say the KGV which was 103. Most of that difference was the size of the voids. This tends to improve here overhall armor rating. In fact, the Bismarck's armor scheme was similar to the Iowa Class (though not as indepth), whose base belt armor was only 12.6 inches but was still considered one of the best protected battleships ever.
The real problem when it came to developing armor was the very narrow band resulting from a single d6 die roll for penetrating armor and requirement to keep armor simple (i.e. no belt armor, deck armor, upperworks armor categories).
An armor rating of 1 means that every hit will penetrate armor. The desicion was made that we did want units such as destroyers and such (obviously the lightest armored warships) automatically penetrate by every hit, so they were given a two. Battleships still auto-penetrate by vitue of their AP and SAP ratings on their main armament.
So that means the armor band is actually 2 through 6 for warships. Why 6? And not higher? Well, once again, we wanted to make sure that many weapons (8-inch guns, torpedoes) have the ability to penetrate thick armor without always relying on the 6 always penetrate rule. We didn't want to armor 7's or 8's or so forth. So armor was capped at 6 for the thickest armor allowing less thick armor to fall into the 4's an 5's, rather than, say 7's for the thick stuff and 5's and 6's for the intermediate.
So we have a narrow range of armor ratings (2 to 6). So now we need to come up with a system tha assigns armor values. This range system needs to give some advantage to heavy cruisers that had real armor versus destroyers who essentially have none. If the destroyers are a 2 then cruisers (with their 3-5 inches of armor) needed to be 3's desipte the fact that their armor can be 4 times less thick than battleship armor which max out at a 6. So now the really heavily armored stuff falls into a range band of 4 to 6. That grouping is very tight. The result is some units get better armor than is initally obvious (i.e the Bismarck). Some balance occurs with the long range plunging fire rule where the Bismark come up short, because she doesn't have particularly good deck armor.
Some might say.....How about a ship special trait? Like say "Tough: Subtract 1 from the attacking DD rolls." It was considered and dropped for the initial release to maintain the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle. The idea of improved traits and stuff may appear in later products, but its pretty clear in the forums that alot of people don't want lots of extra rules, so who knows.
Anyway.....I hope this long winded answer provides people an idea of some of the thought process we went through when assigning values to units. It also is an example of how simplifying game rules can reduce (to a degree) historical accuracy.
--- Rich
rbax, I'm only just slightly confused by your wording that a 1 always penetrates but why destroyers were given a 2? Was the next part "we did want units such as destroyers and such" really meant to be written as "we did not want units such as destroyers and such". That makes better sense when compared with the balance of your comments. I won't make an argument whether that was the best idea or not, but I'll only say that the nickname of "tin cans" was an accurate description of the ship type and they did not stand up well to being smacked about by incoming fire. In other words I'd treat DDs defensively just like any unarmored target like a cargo ship, with the exception of their speed and armament (torpedoes) being where the builders put their focus toward. I am at a disadvantage as I don't have the rules as of yet, but is a ship's speed used as a defensive modifier when targetting it? That's where a destroyer becomes hard to hit as its fleetness is its "armor". Just curious.
